The Flattening of Fashion in the AI Era
- Genna Airam
- Jul 18
- 6 min read
Collage by Genna Airam. Original imagery sourced from Vogue Italia's 2023 AI cover shoot and other credited works featured in this article.
If you've been reading Fashion Gins for a while, you'll know I rarely see fashion in isolation. I'm far more interested in what it reveals about economics, politics, technology and culture than in the clothes themselves. Lately, however, it has become impossible to ignore one particular intersection: fashion and artificial intelligence.
Fashion has become Silicon Valley's latest status symbol. During the Autumn/Winter 2026 season, longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson walked the Matières Fécales runway in Paris, Mark Zuckerberg appeared front row at Prada while Meta continued positioning its smart glasses alongside luxury fashion, and the Bezos' increasingly visible relationship with Vogue suggested that even extraordinary wealth still seeks the kind of cultural legitimacy that money alone can’t buy.
Bryan Johnson walks for Matières Fécales AW26, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg at Prada AW26, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos and Anna Wintour, Los Angeles, 2020.
These aren't isolated moments. They reflect a broader shift in which fashion is increasingly becoming a playground for technology — not only as an industry to invest in, but as a language through which technology seeks cultural relevance.
In my previous piece, I briefly touched on what fashion scholar Agnes Rocamora described as the "flattening" of fashion through her work on mediatization theory in 2016. She argued that fashion had become increasingly shaped by media logic — that it was no longer merely communicated through media, but produced through it. A decade later, with the rise of generative AI, that argument feels more relevant than ever. This piece is my attempt to understand where we currently stand, where to draw the line, and what all of this ultimately means for fashion.
Rocamora argued that digitalization had flattened fashion. I'd argue we've gone a step further: somewhere along the way, we've flattened ourselves too.
For context, mediatization refers to the process through which fashion practices adapt to the logic of media itself. The visual requirements of digital platforms — particularly social media — have prioritised what photographs well over what feels good and lasts long. Fashion increasingly exists to perform on a screen before it ever performs on a body.
In this sense, mediatization contributes to what Rocamora describes as the flattening of fashion, where complexity, craftsmanship and materiality become secondary to visibility. Fast fashion illustrates this particularly well. Brands such as Zara now produce editorial campaigns with the visual sophistication of luxury houses, collaborating with celebrated photographers and creatives to elevate garments designed for rapid consumption. Increasingly, value lies not in how a garment ages or feels, but in how convincingly it performs within an image.
Szilveszter Makó's campaigns for Zara (A Halloween Story and John Galliano)
Fashion, in other words, has been flattened into content.
Naturally, that flattening extends beyond the clothes themselves and into the media responsible for communicating them.
Print journalism once operated on slower editorial rhythms, allowing time for observation, contextualisation and critique. Digital publishing rewards the opposite: speed and constant output. As fashion seasons multiply, capsule collections launch weekly and trends emerge overnight, fashion journalism has been forced to adapt to an endless cycle of immediacy.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the increasing use of AI-generated imagery by publications once regarded as the guardians of fashion authority. When the so-called "fashion bible" begins publishing synthetic imagery, it signals something much larger than a technological upgrade. It reflects a media landscape that increasingly values speed and efficiency over process.
Seraphinne Vallora's AI-generated models for the Guess Summer 2025 campaign, as featured in Vogue.
The reality is that AI isn't going anywhere. If anything, it will become increasingly embedded within creative practice. Ignoring it altogether feels as shortsighted as embracing it uncritically. As creatives, we owe it to ourselves to understand these tools — not so they can replace our work, but so we can decide where, when and whether they belong within it.
I once came across a quote that has stayed with me, it went along the lines of: “I don't need AI to create for me. I need AI to cook and clean” so that basically I have more time to create. While AI hasn't quite mastered dinner yet, the sentiment resonates. There are countless repetitive, administrative and time-consuming tasks that AI can meaningfully assist with, freeing creatives to spend more time doing the work only they know best.
One example I particularly enjoyed was Vogue Italia's 2023 cover featuring Bella Hadid, photographed by Carlijn Jacobs, styled by Imruh Asha, and developed in collaboration with DALL·E and AI artist Chad Nelson.
From Vogue Italia, “Ars Artificialis”, May 2023.
What made that project compelling wasn't simply the use of AI, but its transparency. The technology wasn't hidden to cut production costs or imitate reality. Instead, it became part of the creative process itself — a challenge, almost a collaborator, helping build visual worlds that surprised even the people making them. It sparked a conversation rather than attempting to deceive.
More recently, however, I found myself questioning a different kind of AI use.
Scrolling through Instagram, I came across several creators whose biographies identified them as photographers. Their work immediately captivated me: surreal cinematic worlds. Only after digging through comments and older posts did I realise that most of these images and videos had been generated using AI.
AI-generated video shared on Instagram, illustrating the growing ambiguity between filmmaking, image generation and creative authorship.
This is where my discomfort begins.
The work itself is undeniably imaginative. Building entirely new visual worlds still requires taste, references, direction and creativity. I don't question that for a second. What I question is authorship. If the majority of your portfolio consists of AI-generated images or videos, do traditional labels like photographer or videographer still accurately describe the practice? Or do we need a new vocabulary for a new medium?
That question becomes even more important when we remember there are photographers, stylists, set designers and artists painstakingly building equally extraordinary worlds by hand.
Excerpt from SWIM LESSONS, directed by Matt Wisner.
Ironically, AI has also fuelled the opposite movement. As synthetic imagery proliferates, many creatives are doubling down on physical craft — building elaborate sets, experimenting with unconventional materials, embracing imperfections and making the process visible again. The more human made the creation becomes, the more valuable effort itself appears.
WGSN described this shift as "Humanness in an AI World" in its SXSW 2026 predictions. On the runway, it has taken the form of painterly florals, bold statement prints, reinvented classics, imperfect finishes and at-home upcycling.
More broadly, it reflects a renewed appreciation for work that bears visible traces of the human hand.
Christopher Esber Pre-Fall 2026; IFM Paris SS27; Homme Plissé Issey Miyake SS26; Altuzarra SS26.
The conversation around AI is also impossible to separate from its environmental and ethical implications. While these tools can undoubtedly save businesses time and resources, those efficiencies come with costs that often remain invisible — from significant energy consumption to growing pressure on physical infrastructure. Beyond environmental concerns lies an equally important ethical debate around labour, intellectual property and creative ownership.
Advocates argue that AI expands creativity by allowing us to imagine worlds that would otherwise be impossible to build. I understand that argument. But I'd also argue that constraints have always been one of creativity's greatest catalysts.
Limited budgets force experimentation. Material shortages inspire innovation. Mistakes lead to discoveries. Some of the most groundbreaking work in fashion and beyond has emerged precisely because someone didn't have the easiest solution available at hand.
Generative AI removes much of that productive friction. While it accelerates production, it can also flatten the very process through which original ideas emerge. AI can only generate from what already exists.
AI-generated marketing materials found online.
Innovation, on the other hand, often comes from experimentation and getting our hands dirty for a change.
Which brings me back to Rocamora. Perhaps the flattening she described was never just about fashion becoming more image-driven. Perhaps it was the beginning of something much larger. Fashion became flattened into content. Journalism became flattened into speed. Creativity risks becoming flattened into prompts. And somewhere along the way, our relationship with making, learning and imagining risks becoming flattened too.
So perhaps the challenge isn't deciding whether to embrace or reject AI. It's learning enough about it to use it deliberately rather than depend on it. Master your craft first. Stay curious about new technologies second. Collaborate with them when they genuinely expand your practice, not when they replace it.
And above all, keep questioning — not just what these tools allow us to make, but what they might slowly convince us to stop making.
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